It often happens to the
professional critic not to be able to finish a book, but of course he must
hide the weakness, for it is his business to get to the end of books
whether they weary him or not. It is as much his living to finish reading
a book as it is mine to finish writing a book. Twice lately I have got
ignominiously "stuck" in novels, and in each case I particularly regretted
the sad breakdown. Gabriele d'Annunzio's "Forse che si forse che no" has
been my undoing. I began it in the French version by Donatella Cross
(Calmann-Levy, 3 fr. 50), and I began it with joy and hope. The
translation, by the way, is very good. Whatever mountebank tricks
d'Annunzio may play as a human being, he has undoubtedly written some very
great works. He is an intensely original artist. You may sometimes think
him silly, foppish, extravagant, or even caddish (as in "Il Fuoco"), but
you have to admit that the English notions of what constitutes
extravagance or caddishness are by no means universally held. And anyhow
you have to admit that here is a man who really holds an attitude towards
life, who is steeped in the sense of style, and who has a superb passion
for beauty. Some of d'Annunzio's novels were a revelation, dazzling. And
who that began even "Il Fuoco" could resist it? How adult, how subtle, how
(in the proper signification) refined, seems the sexuality of d'Annunzio
after the timid, gawky, infantile, barbaric sexuality of our "island
story"! People are not far wrong on the Continent when they say, as they
do say, that English novelists cannot deal with an Englishwoman--or could
not up till a few years ago.
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